Revolution in development of new drugs: to follow were nature leads. Prof E. Costa en R. Levi-Montalcini’s work

Follow were nature leads

Professor Erminio Costa: ‘to follow were nature leads’.

to follow were nature leads

Dr Costa’s heritage: to follow where nature leads

In 1986 Professor Costa delivered a keynote lecture in Washington, bearing the title ‘to follow where nature leads’. This lecture has been put again in new fresh light by Dr Della Valle’s Epitech neuroscience project. In this lecture Costa talked with great vision about how nature itself can become our tutor in developing new drugs.

Aspects like synaptic plasticity and modulation, as well as related highly modern topics were already extensively discussed hy him. He pointed out that new innovative ways are in need to be explored, by leaving old monocausal scemes of thinking. New compounds will emerge based on this innovative strategy of ‘to following where nature leads’.

It was exactly this focus which brought Levi-Montalcini to focus on nature’s great modulating endocannabinoid molecule palmitoylethanolamide as a useful compound for the clinic. Palmitoylethanolamide now serves many patients as a useful and valuable analgesic and anti-inflammatory compound.

The ideas of Costa were taken up in a new way by the Nobel laureates Rita Levi Montalcini and Gerald Edelmann, who both together with Costa founded the International Scool of Neuroscience of Praglia (Padova, Italy) in 1988. This school of neuroscience brought the work of cutting-edge neuroscientists to a large audience of graduate students to expose them to the newest advances in the field.

Literature

E. Costa, An early attempt to foster neuroscience globalization. An autobiography, Good Life Press, Nashville (2003)